Tandem Ukraine alumni Svitlana Oslavska recently went to South East Turkey with a Tandem alumni travel grant. She is currently writing a book about her travels in the region and shares a story of her most recent trip with us in this photo essay.

I’ve travelled to Turkey for a dozen times in the last 5 years. As a tourist and a volunteer, and recently as a reporter. I have lots of unpublished texts from those trips as well as already published ones. Thus, the idea of writing a book with those stories have settled in my mind at one moment. But I needed to explore some parts of the country further. So, after months of chops and changes, I resolved to apply for a Tandem alumni travel grant and stated clearly in the application that I am writing a book. That was a sign for me I am really doing this, no way back.

In the mid of December, I took a flight from Lviv, Ukraine to Hatay in Turkey. Then I travelled from Antakya to Mardin through Gaziantep and Sanliurfa, with a detour to a tiny Armenian village of Vakifli. In two weeks I was back in Ukraine, with my notebook full of stories to write down.

In Antakya, I followed the artificial and original signs of the coexistence of cultures along the narrow streets of Antakya-Antioch, together with Emrah. In Gaziantep, Vural took me on a trip in time in the former Armenian neighbourhood. They generously shared their knowledge and experience of the cities and local life with me. I’d need many pages to write about all of this. I will: in the book.

And here is a place to tell a short story from another region, the most Eastern one I’ve been during this journey.

In Mardin, I had no one who could show me the city. So, I decided to rely on dates.
I arrived on December 24th, Christmas Eve. Mardin seemed so far away from the majority Christian world, that I decided to look for a church, although I am not a believer. The next morning, I was standing among Syriac Christians from Mardin who came for a holy mass with their families, looking at the ancient walls and quite interesting primitive sacred art on the walls of the Forty Martyrs Church built in the 4th century.

The next day I met an architecture student who admired Mardin. We had a walk around old town and stopped in a cozy café. Ordered local “dibek” coffee and watched for a while a silent movie that was screened in the café. Then we noticed the LGBT flag with the word PACE on it, hanging behind the bar counter.

“Oh, you could see it from your place”, – the man behind the counter seemed surprised that the clients could spot the flag. We laughed, and a man joined us at the table.

He was the owner of this place. What’s more, the man was Syriac Christian, originally from Mardin. After attending the morning ceremony, I was curious to listen to what he could tell about the Syriac community in Mardin. “I am not a traditional person”, he warned me. “But I am afraid of God, and I love God”, he added.

I mentioned I was not a believer and both the man and my friend widened their eyes. I was lucky the English level did not allow us to go deep into such a discussion. Instead of this, I asked him, is it easy to be Assyrian in a Muslim majority country, a kind of traditional journalist question. The café owner fervently assured me that it all fine, nothing to talk about.

To change the topic I asked, pointing at the badge on his apron. “What does Gabi mean?”. “Gabi is my name”, he laughed and showed his ID card to prove this unusual name belongs to him. “I was baptized at the Mor Gabriel Monastery”, he said, mentioning one of the oldest and most famous Syriac monasteries in this region. “And my father wanted to give me a name after that saint, Gabriel. But he was not allowed by the state officials, so he left just Gabi”.